In the manufacture of electronic products, many manufacturing operations involve the assembly of discrete electrical and mechanical components to a support structure, in which these components are placed and soldered onto a circuit board. In a typical case, the circuit board is prepared by placing solder deposits at locations on the board at which components are to be mounted. Optionally, solder is placed directly on the components before the components are mounted. Component placement machines then select and properly orient components on the circuit board. Ordinarily, the components are temporarily secured to the circuit board by using a flux material, or other tacking medium. The solder is then reflowed to more permanently secure the components to the circuit board.
During assembly, components are retrieved from a component dispenser, oriented for placement, such as with the aid of an imaging system, or other alignment mechanism, and then placed on the circuit board. Oftentimes, the components are temporarily secured with tacking medium applied to the circuit board in a previous manufacturing process step. Alternatively, the tacking medium may be placed directly on the components. In either case, valuable manufacturing cycle time is consumed while the tacking medium is being applied. This cycle time must be added to other steps needed to place the components.
The reduction of manufacturing cycle time is an important goal of most manufacturing operations. This is especially true for high volume manufacturing involving the placement of several components to complete a product. Here, the extra time consumed by the component placement process has a substantial impact on overall production output. Hence, solutions which reduce manufacturing cycle time by reducing or eliminating steps are constantly in demand. Therefore, there exists a need to improve the cycle time required for component placement.